


Bad Influence

by ReddieKaspbrak



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Pining, Porn Watching, Practice Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-04 05:40:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReddieKaspbrak/pseuds/ReddieKaspbrak
Summary: Just two bros watching porn together 'cause they're not gay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Modern AU in that laptops and Pornhub are both things that exist

“What’re you doing?” 

Richie snaps his gaze away from Eddie’s laptop and looks across the room wide-eyed. Eddie’s standing in the doorway, his cheeks flushed from whatever he’d used to wash his face, and he’s wearing a pair of soft pink pajamas—a silk button-up shirt with matching shorts that are somehow even shorter than the ones he usually wears. Richie can tell because there is a pale line of skin at the top of his thighs that the sun hasn’t yet touched. Richie’s mouth goes dry and he swallows hard, trying to ignore it. 

But Eddie, of course, doesn’t notice because Eddie _never_ notices. Instead, he tosses his dirty clothes into his laundry hamper and turns back to Richie, his eyebrows still raised in question. “That’s _my _ laptop, in case you didn’t notice.” 

Oh, Richie had noticed alright, he’d just thought he had more time to get on and back off before Eddie caught him. In the nearly ten years Richie had known him, Eddie’s nighttime routine had always taken the same amount of time: exactly thirteen minutes from start to finish. He’d picked one hell of a night to speed through it. 

Eddie doesn’t seem mad though, only curious, and Richie is too flustered to do anything but tell the truth. “I’m trying to figure out what kind of porn you like,” he says, pushing his glasses farther up his nose just to give his hands something to do. “But the only thing in your fucking browsing history is WebMD.” It’s not the most platonic thing to say—definitely not something Richie would ever say to Bill or Ben or, well, _anyone_, who wasn’t Eddie fucking Kaspbrak—but it’s too late to take it back now. 

“What?! Why?!” Eddie scrambles to rescue his laptop, nearly upending it onto the floor in the process, and then clutches it to his chest to hide the screen from Richie’s prying eyes. Not that there is anything to hide, Richie’s sure of that. He’s good at snooping. There was nothing to snoop. “I don’t watch porn. That’s disgusting!” 

A normal person would drop the conversation before things _really_ got awkward, but the flush on Eddie’s cheeks darkens and Richie can’t help but wonder just how dark he can make them go. “Then what the fuck do you jerk it to?” he asks. “Your mom? I mean, sure, it gets _me_ off, but it’s a little weird if you do it.” 

“I don’t do that either!” Eddie sputters, clutching the laptop even tighter to his chest. He’s tomato-red now and more than anything, Richie wants to reach out and touch the flushed skin of his cheeks, to feel the heat that _he_ had put there. “It’s dirty. And…My mom always said I’m not supposed to. Why? Do you?” 

“Jerk it?” Richie laughs. “Yeah!” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, you idiot. Watch porn.” 

He’s curious. Richie can tell he is curious. His fingers are tapping out a nervous rhythm against the side of his laptop and he’s looking at Richie in that wide-eyed way he gets about him sometimes, like with only a little more wheedling, Richie could convince him of anything. 

Something no one else really seems to understand about Eddie is that although his mom has trained him to be cautious and careful, it’s not in his nature. He has an overwhelming need to defy expectations and _that_, combined with a rebellious streak his mom hadn’t yet been able to tame out of him, is a dangerous combination. 

“Of course I watch porn,” Richie lies—although, to be fair, it’s not from lack of trying. The only computer in his house that he has access to is a shared desktop in the living room, so aside from a few stolen glances at Cinemax After Dark, Richie is just as much a porn virgin as Eddie. He can’t very well admit that, though. He has a reputation to uphold. “Everyone fucking does. It’s natural. Here, let me show you.” 

He reaches for Eddie’s laptop without thinking and then freezes with his arms extended as he realizes what he’s about to do. His mouth, as usual, had run forward faster than his mind could keep up with and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what his best-case scenario was supposed to be here. _Beep beep, Richie_, he warns himself. _Beep fucking beep._

But Eddie, bless him, takes a tentative step forward and then holds the laptop out like an offering, his eyebrows furrowed in such a way that it looks like he too is having difficulty figuring out why the fuck he’s agreeing to this. Richie has to force back the blush he can feel forming, trying to keep his cool because if he loses it, Eddie’s going to lose it too, and then things really are going to get awkward. If he can just pretend this is normal for long enough, it doesn’t have to be a whole thing. It can just be two bros hanging out. Two bros hanging out, watching porn together. Platonic porn watching. That’s gotta be a thing, right? Somewhere? 

Richie takes the computer as if he actually knows what he’s doing and pulls up Google because that seems to be the most logical place to start. He’s still splayed out over Eddie’s whole bed, but he’s too nervous to move. Eddie, more hesitant, settles in next to him so that their sides are touching, but Eddie’s knees are pulled up to his chest and he seems a bit uncomfortable. Like maybe some creeper is forcing him to watch porn or something. But it’s too late to back out now. 

Richie types a “P” into the search bar, but before he can finish the whole word, Eddie gasps and grabs his wrist to stop him. Richie’s skin boils at the contact in the most delicious way and he can feel himself start to harden in his pants from that touch alone. 

“Use an incognito browser, you fucking idiot,” Eddie hisses. “Do you know my mom at all?” 

“Intimately,” Richie grins. Eddie glares at him, gritting his teeth against the joke and, not wanting to anger him further, Richie opens an incognito browser to complete his Google search for “porn.” He clicks open the top result and before he can fully brace himself for what he is about to see, the screen fills with tiny thumbnails of naked bodies. Richie was already half-hard at just the prospect of both porn and Eddie in close proximity and he stiffens further at the images. Eddie, however, grimaces as if he’s tasted something bad. 

“They just get right to the point, huh?” he asks, looking at a still of a very large breasted girl. He doesn’t seem too interested and Richie tries not to read too much into that. 

“So, what’re you in the mood for?” he asks grandly, gesturing to the screen as if he’s offering up snacks from a buffet. He finds the navigation panel and opens it like a menu for Eddie to peruse the selections: Teen, Lesbian, MILF. 

Anal. 

When Eddie doesn’t respond immediately, he looks up to find him still looking horrified. “I don’t know!” he cries when he notices Richie staring. His cheeks seem to have reached peak redness because they’re stuck on that tomato-like color from earlier. Richie clenches his fists to keep from reaching out to feel the heat of them. “You’re the one who does this. You pick!” 

It’s only once Richie is faced with the daunting task of picking a video himself that he realizes how invasive the question was in the first place. He has half a mind to click on the Gay category just so he can play the whole thing off as a joke, but there’s a dark, twisted desire in his stomach that tells him that wouldn’t be a joke at all, so he doesn’t. Instead, he closes the navigation panel entirely and just clicks on the first video he sees: HOT CHICK BANGED BY TWO DUDES. 

Once the video has loaded, Richie doesn’t let himself overthink it. He just pushes play, switches over to full screen mode, and then sets the laptop down on the bed in front of Eddie as if trying to rid himself of its presence. 

“Oh my god,” Eddie whines as the video starts. He buries his face in his hands as if he can’t bear to even look at the screen and Richie begins to understand that Eddie hadn’t actually thought he was being serious—that _he_ thought they were playing some elaborate game of chicken that Richie was going to lose. Richie, however, wasn’t playing chicken and now the two of them really are watching porn. Together. He looks up, wondering if maybe he should stop the video, but to his surprise, Eddie is still watching the screen between the tips of his outstretched fingers and that is enough for Richie to let it play. 

The video opens on some choppy dialogue in thick, foreign accents and Richie, impatient as always, wants to fast-forward to the point where clothes actually start coming off, but he’s scared of looking too eager, so he stays where he is, his hands tucked into his lap as if that might keep them from touching things he’s not supposed to touch. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to get into the action, which is a goddamn miracle because Richie is getting harder by the second at only the expectation of nudity and the last thing he needs is to come in his pants before boobs are even out. Eddie would never let him live that down. 

The girl in the video is objectively pretty. She has a small waist, big boobs, and beautiful long, blonde hair. She also kind of reminds Richie of his mom and he tells himself _that’s_ why he simply cannot bring himself to care. He watches as the two men in the video, each tall, dark, and handsome, sandwich her between their chiseled bodies. She kisses one of them, then the other, and then, surprising Richie more than anyone, the men lean over her shoulder and _kiss each other_ as she looks on, smirking. 

Richie’s heart stops in his chest and then gallops forward as if being chased. 

“Oh, um, I…” he says, feeling for some reason as if he needs to apologize, but then the two men are doing a whole lot more than kissing and he loses his train of thought. 

Soon, the girl is lying back on the couch with one of the men’s mouths between her legs and that same man is being fucked from behind by the other and Richie knows that he should be watching the girl, but he’s just not. Because watching those two guys fuck is the single most erotic experience of his life. The sounds they’re making? So deep and guttural and animalistic? Richie can _feel_ those sounds inside of him and he knows that if Eddie were to look over at him now, he would see a lying liar who lies because there is no way in hell that Richie can pretend he’s ever seen anything like this before in his life. 

There’s an almost hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest at the sheer absurdity of the situation he has managed to orchestrate for himself and he feels like he needs to crack a joke, to try to play it off as something less than it is, but he can’t speak. The room is too quiet for words. They’ve got the volume of the video turned up just loud enough that they can kind of hear it if they strain, but even that is overpowered by the sounds of their breathing. Richie listens as Eddie’s breath hitches in his chest at a particularly hard thrust from the guy on top, as if _he_ is the one being fucked, and Richie can’t take it anymore. He’s hard as a fucking rock, his dick straining painfully against the zipper of his jeans, which he hadn’t yet gotten around to changing out of, and he has to touch himself. He just has to. 

So he slowly moves his hand up to cup himself through his clothes, hoping that Eddie won’t see. He’s not sure if he’s trying to stave off an orgasm or cause one, but the breathy, frankly pathetic, sound he makes at his own touch is enough to have him pulling away again before he really does come in his pants. But now it’s worse because the sounds are still there—the moans and the grunts and the wet slaps of skin on skin—and Eddie is still next to him, his arm like a brand against his own, and now Richie knows what it feels like to be touched and he wants to do it again. His skin is getting hotter by the second and he worries that he might actually spontaneously combust. 

His hand drifts towards his pants again of its own accord, but he forces it away with a whimper and turns back to the video, focusing instead on a tiny pixel that is out on Eddie’s screen, hoping that will keep him sane for a little while longer. 

“You can if you want to,” Eddie says out of nowhere and when Richie turns, Eddie’s looking right at him, his pupils blown. “Touch yourself. I don’t mind.” 

Richie is too horny to think about the consequences. His modesty erased by Eddie’s words, he unbuttons his jeans and snakes his hand inside, gently extracting himself from his boxers, careful not to grip himself too tight in case he blows his load at that alone. He strokes himself once, then twice, then has to stop to allow himself to breathe. Fuck. This isn’t going to last long. 

The problem is that usually when he does this, he thinks about Eddie. About the flush of his cheeks. About the shape of his lips. About how those lips, usually turned towards him in a sneer, would look wrapped around his cock. Sometimes he tries _not_ to think about Eddie and ends up thinking about him anyways. Which is somehow worse—like it’s an instinct rather than a conscious choice. But now, with Eddie right next to him, it feels wrong to fantasize, but inevitable all the same. 

He starts stroking himself again, his gaze fixated on the video in front of him even though he has long ago lost interest. He wants to turn and look at Eddie, but that seems somehow inappropriate. He can feel Eddie looking at him, though. Can feel his eyes brush across his skin like a physical touch. And then he doesn’t have to imagine anymore because Eddie’s hand is right there on top of his and Richie is coming all over both of them with a sound like a dying animal that he will be embarrassed about later. 

Eddie’s hand disappears just as quickly as it had come, but it takes Richie a while to catch his breath and as he lays there, his chest heaving, he can still hear the pornographic sounds coming from Eddie’s laptop speakers and he begins to feel guilty. He sits up halfway to shut off the video, but Eddie squawks out a protest before he can do so. 

“Are you crazy? Don’t touch that! You’ve got come all over your hands!” Eddie stops the video himself and then moves as if he is going to crawl out of bed. “I’ll get us something to clean up with. Hold on.” 

Before he can disappear completely, Richie pulls him back down to the mattress, only realizing afterwards that he’d used his still-sticky hand to do so. Eddie doesn’t even argue, which should have been his first clue that the boy wasn’t exactly in his right mind. 

“Wait,” Richie says. “Don’t you want…?” He looks pointedly down at Eddie’s crotch. His tiny shorts are tented spectacularly and Richie longs to know what he’s hiding underneath them. 

Richie wants _him_. In his mouth. On his tongue. Whatever Eddie will allow. 

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie argues, swatting Richie away. “It’ll disappear if I ignore it long enough.” He sounds as if he speaks from experience and that makes Richie hopelessly sad, so he reaches for him anyway, his hand moving forward so slowly that Eddie has every chance to refuse him, but he doesn’t. He just watches as Richie moves closer, his bottom lip curled between his teeth. Waiting. Hoping. 

Richie cups him through his pajama pants, just as he had cupped himself, but it feels so different to be doing it to someone else. For one thing, the fabric of Eddie’s pants is smooth under his touch, not rough like his jeans had been, and for another, he can feel _everything_ through the paper-thin silk. Eddie’s bigger than he would have imagined and it makes Richie’s mouth water. 

Eddie hisses at his touch. “Richie,” he says and it sounds almost like a warning, but then he pushes closer, thrusting his hips into Richie’s hand, and Richie figures that it would be safer to ignore the warning for now and instead give Eddie what he’s asking for. 

He pushes Eddie back so that he’s lying down on the bed, his head cushioned by a mountain of pillows, and then he lies down next to him, one hand gripping Eddie through his pants and the other holding himself upright. Eddie’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut as if he’s scared to open them and his mouth is parted in a small “o” of pleasure. Every time Richie strokes him, his hips follow the touch until they’ve built up a steady rhythm in time to their matching heartbeats. 

Richie wants to kiss him, to make this _real_, but he knows that he can’t, so instead he buries his face in Eddie’s neck and mouths at the hot skin there, hoping that maybe in his lust-filled haze, Eddie might think it’s some kind of accident. And whatever Eddie thinks, he certainly doesn’t seem to mind because his grip on the back of Richie’s T-shirt tightens until his fingernails are digging painfully into Richie’s skin, but Richie doesn’t care because he knows that in the morning, those marks will still be there to remind him that this really happened. 

He speeds up his hand and Eddie comes with a quiet whimper, soaking the front of his silk pajamas. Richie is hypnotized by the pretty flush on Eddie’s cheeks. 

Eddie blinks his eyes open after a few seconds, almost as if he can’t believe that actually happened, and Richie removes his hand from his body, not wanting it to be swiped away in anger. But Eddie doesn’t seem angry. Not yet. His pupils are still dark and he has that come-dumb look about him that Richie only ever thought he would see in his dreams. 

Another few seconds pass and the post-orgasm awkwardness sets in like Richie had worried it might. So he dons the only armor he’s ever known—humor—and places a wet, smacking kiss to Eddie’s forehead before sitting up fully, his cheeks now the same tomato-red that Eddie’s had been earlier. “Told ya it feels good,” he says. “You should do it more often. I heard it can give you cancer if you just let all of that gunk get backed up in there. You have to jerk it every now and then. Bet your mom didn’t tell ya that.” 

Eddie frowns, as if he can’t tell whether Richie is lying. “Really?” 

“Really really.” 

It takes a while for Eddie to steady his breathing—so long that Richie almost worries he’s going to have to go searching for his inhaler—but then Eddie sits and immediately winces. “Gross,” he says, looking down at the pretty fantastic come stain on the front of his pants. “I need to—” He moves to get out of bed once more and Richie’s next words are pulled out of him by force. 

“We should do that again sometime,” he says, almost desperately. Eddie freezes, halfway out of bed, and then rolls his eyes. 

“You’re a fucking bad influence, you know that,” he says, but there’s no real bite to his words. “I’m going to get something to clean this up. Try not to defile anything else while I’m gone?” 

He disappears from the room, leaving Richie alone with his thoughts, and Richie starts to panic. What the fuck had he just done? He’d forced the poor boy to watch gay porn, attacked his neck like a blood-thirsty vampire, and then deflowered him. Eddie was going to hate him now, even if just for getting come all over his newly washed sheets. 

By the time Eddie returns from the bathroom in a new, identical pair of pink silk pajamas, Richie has entirely convinced himself that Eddie is going to kick him out into the night for his insubordination. But all Eddie does is toss Richie a wet rag as if nothing is amiss. Richie isn’t sure how to take it, but he feels too lucky to argue. So he cleans himself up to the best of his ability and then changes out of his crusty jeans, turning away from Eddie as he does so, as if the other boy hadn’t been staring at his unclothed dick not ten minutes before. 

Once he’s dressed, he turns back to the bed to find Eddie already curled onto his side, staring at Richie with a soft smile. He pats the spot on the mattress next to him, inviting Richie to bed, and Richie goes, only a little surprised when Eddie curls into him once he’s settled, laying his head on Richie’s chest. It’s how they usually sleep: folded together so close that they can hear the other’s heartbeat. It’s just never meant so much before. 

Eddie says nothing else and Richie accepts that it is finally bedtime, but he can’t turn his brain off. Despite all of the context clues telling him that Eddie is fine, that he isn’t mad, Richie needs to know for sure. 

“Eddie?” he asks, his voice tremulous. 

“We should do that again sometime,” Eddie says instead of answering, repeating Richie’s words from earlier. He never even opens eyes. Richie smiles so wide that his cheeks burn. “Now go to sleep. It’s past my bedtime.” 

So Richie does. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just two bros making out 'cause they're not gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this turned out longer than expected (story of my life), but enjoy anyways!

When Richie wakes up the next morning, he finds himself nose to nose with a very smug-looking Eddie Kaspbrak. Or at least he thinks so. It’s hard to be entirely sure without his glasses on. He squints, thinking that might help bring the other boy into focus, but it doesn’t, and Richie has never been more desperate to _see_.  


Memories from the night before come back to him in flashes. Eddie’s hand molded to his as he jacked himself off. Eddie’s pulse pounding beneath his lips as he kissed his neck. Eddie’s desperate, broken moans as Richie pushed him over the edge for what he was almost positive had been the very first time. 

Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. 

Unsurprisingly, the memories do nothing to soften Richie’s raging hard-on and he takes a moment out of his busy morning to thank whatever deity is listening that he and Eddie had managed to untangle themselves sometime during the night because otherwise, he probably would have woken up humping the poor boy and his dignity wouldn’t have survived that. It was hanging on by a thread as is. 

“‘Morning,” he says, his voice thick, and blindly reaches behind him in search of his glasses. Eddie loses patience with this scavenger hunt quickly and climbs over Richie to do it himself. For just a moment, Eddie’s body is pressed hard against his, a comfortable weight pushing him down into the mattress just as Richie had done to him the night before under much sexier circumstances, but it ends quickly. Eddie hands over the glasses and by the time Richie puts them on, he is blushing—his cheeks burning as hot as the fire in his belly. 

He is also harder than ever. 

Now that he can actually see, Richie takes a second to soak in his surroundings. Eddie’s sitting crossed-legged next to him, still in that same cursed pair of pink silk pajamas, and Richie was right the first time: he does look smug. He also looks like sin personified and Richie immediately regrets the glasses. Being able to look at him, but not touch, is a new type of torture. Or, well, not _new_, but now that he knows, intimately, what touching feels like, the _not_ touching is even harder. 

Eddie’s usually perfectly coiffed hair is a mess of tangles atop his head and, like Richie, his cheeks are already flushed a delicious pink—although _his_ do not seem to be colored by embarrassment. Instead, it’s almost as if he’s excited about something. He has that about-to-burst look on his face like he wants to speak, but is just waiting for the opportune moment. 

“What?” Richie asks warily, a little scared of what Eddie might say. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Eddie shifts and Richie catches sight of a dark purple bruise at the base of his throat. A bruise in the shape of his own lips. He reaches out in shock, feeling the sudden need to _touch _just to make sure the bruise is really there, but Eddie swats him away, either not knowing or not caring about the mark Richie had branded onto his skin. 

“You were drooling!” Eddie announces excitedly, his body literally vibrating with unbridled joy at having witnessed something so embarrassing about his best friend. Richie frowns. _That_ had been his grand pronouncement? It seemed to Richie that the massive boner he was _still_ sporting would have been an even better dig, but he wasn’t about to point that out in hopes that maybe Eddie hadn’t noticed. 

“Shut up!” he cries, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth where there is, in fact, dried drool crusted on the side of his lip. In a mirror of what Richie had done only seconds before, Eddie reaches out to touch it, but this time, it’s Richie’s turn to swat him away. “Ew! Stop!” 

Eddie laughs, but then scrunches his nose in distaste. “God, your breath, Trashmouth,” he says, waving his hand in front of his face to disperse the foul smell. “Go brush your teeth. Are you trying to kill me?” 

“Wow,” Richie deadpans, pretending to be offended. “Two punches already and I’ve only been awake for a minute. Cut me some slack, Eds.” 

Eddie’s smile grows wider and his happiness is infectious. Richie finds himself smiling too. He can’t help but wonder if Eddie’s early morning playfulness is a direct result of the orgasm he had given him the night before, but he dismisses the idea as soon as it comes because if orgasms made Eddie _that_ happy, surely he would want another, and he doesn’t. Richie knows he doesn’t because those damn pink shorts don’t hide anything and as far as he can tell, Eddie is as soft as Richie is hard. 

“Fine,” Richie mumbles, rolling out of the bed with his hands over his crotch to hide his erection. He grabs his dirty jeans off of the floor and then holds them in front of him as he sidles out of the room. “I’ll go brush my teeth. Good lord.” 

As he leaves, he hears Eddie call behind him, “And clean the toothpaste out of the sink this time or I swear to God!” 

Alone in the bathroom, Richie finally has time to think. Too _much_ time, as it turns out. He had hoped that a few minutes without Eddie sitting in his direct line of sight would be enough to make his erection flag, but even without the reminder, all he can think about is Eddie and what he sounds like when he comes. Needless to say, Richie’s erection isn’t going anywhere. 

“Fucking traitor,” he mutters down at it before glancing towards the shower, wondering if Eddie would think it weird if he jumped in. He probably wouldn’t. Eddie is a clean person. He respects clean people. But the idea of stripping naked while Eddie waits in the next room is too much. Or at least that’s what Richie tells himself so that he doesn’t have to admit that he’s reluctant to erase the physical evidence of their night together just yet. So he jerks off over the toilet instead, imagining Eddie on his knees in front of him, and he swears to himself that he will never, as long as he lives, tell another living soul. 

Eddie’s already dressed when Richie returns to the room and he’s straightened the place up in his absence. The bed has been meticulously made, the corners crisp and even, and the laptop they’d been using the night before has now been moved from the floor where they left it to its normal place atop Eddie’s desk. Richie stares at it for far too long. 

“Bill called,” Eddie says, scooping a pile of pill bottles into his weekend fanny pack. “Him and Stan are headed to the Aladdin. You wanna go?” 

Richie does, so they do. 

They don’t talk about the porn. Not that day. Not the day after. In fact, Eddie is uncharacteristically chill about the whole thing. So much so that if it weren’t for the bruises, Richie could probably brush the whole thing off as nothing more than a very vivid wet dream. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

But there _are_ bruises. The dark purple one at the base of Eddie’s neck stays there for days as a constant reminder of what they had done, but Richie has his own bruises too: a smattering of tiny fingerprints along his back where Eddie had gripped him so tight, Richie thought it might rip him in two. 

If Eddie can see the bruise, he pretends that he can’t. He wears it proudly, never bothering to cover it with make-up or scarves, and Richie’s mouth waters every time he catches sight of it—especially as it starts to fade—because all he wants to do is slot his lips back into place and mark him again. None of the other Losers mention the bruise, though, almost as if they can’t—or don’t want—to see it and Richie begins to think that maybe he had imagined it too. Until one day at lunch, he catches Eddie absently pressing on it and pops a boner so spectacular that he has to stay sitting at the cafeteria table long after the other Losers have left. 

But other than a few inopportune boners here and there, things are normal. Which should be impossible. You can’t just jerk off with your best friend and have everything stay the same, right? Eddie should hate him. Eddie should be _scared_ of him. But instead, Eddie is acting as if nothing happened. As if coming face-to-face with his best friend’s dick had not been—as it had for Richie—some sort of religious experience. He still rolls his eyes at everything Richie says, still calls him “Trashmouth,” still chooses to sit next to him when given the choice over any of the other Losers. He still climbs onto the hammock with him, throws his legs into his lap, and settles in until they’re touching all along their sides. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing different than anything they’ve ever done before_. _But it _feels_ different now. It feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. Because once you’ve seen your best friend’s dick, can you really go back to just being friends? 

Apparently, to Eddie, the answer is yes. 

So Richie continues on with his life, pretending that he doesn’t know what Eddie looks like when he comes, and it’s fine. It’s totally fine. Except Richie’s not sleeping much and when he does, he dreams of Eddie and what it had felt like to hold him like he was the only other person in the world. 

+++ 

Beverly and Bill are making out on the other side of the school yard and even though Richie wants to, he can’t look away. He’s not the only one. Eddie, Ben, and Stan are also staring as Mike desperately tries to distract them all with an anecdote about football practice. 

“Oh my god, you guys _have_ to stop.” Mike finally says, dragging their attention back to him. “They’re just kissing.” 

And they _were_ just kissing. Richie was pretty sure that was all they had _ever_ done, but he was still jealous. Because even though he had gotten farther with Eddie than Bill would probably ever get with Bev, he had never actually kissed him. And it wasn’t fucking fair. 

Properly scolded, the Losers scatter after that, each making their way home after a long day of school. Richie and Eddie walk together. 

“You wanna play video games at my place?” Eddie asks even though he has the crappiest selection of games out of all of them. Richie doesn’t want to play video games, but he does want to spend time with Eddie, so he says yes. 

Eddie’s mom is asleep in a recliner by the TV when they walk in, her heavy snores reverberating throughout the house, so Eddie is able to sneak Richie upstairs without her noticing. Richie’s not exactly Mrs. K’s favorite person. She seems to be under the impression that he’s a bad influence on her son. Richie hasn’t the slightest idea why. 

Eddie ushers him into his room silently and then locks the door behind them. Richie’s heart jumps a bit at the click of the lock, but he tries not to read too much into it. He would lock his door too if he had a mother like Eddie’s. 

Richie hasn’t been back to the Kaspbrak house in weeks, scared that his presence might trigger some latent memory in Eddie’s mind—because he’s pretty much decided at this point that Eddie has willfully forgotten everything about that night, probably for the best—but Eddie’s room looks just as neat and tidy as it always has. Richie is the only thing out of place. He takes a deep breath and turns. 

“So,” he says, clapping his hands together. “What’re we going to play? Mario Kart? Or was that too violent for Mrs. K’s standards? I can’t remember.” 

Eddie is still leaning back against his bedroom door and there is a fire in his eyes that Richie hadn’t been expecting. He stumbles back a step under the force of it. “What?” 

“I think we should make out.” 

He says it so matter-of-factly that Richie is sure he must have misheard. So, very eloquently, he replies, “Huh?” His voice is several octaves higher than he has ever heard it and Eddie has the nerve to grin at his obvious discomfort, but there is a slight dusting of pink on his cheeks that betrays just how nervous he is. 

“I’ve been watching the porn,” he explains, “like you told me—” 

And, really, Richie has to stop him there. “You’ve been watching the _what now_?” 

Richie thinks about Eddie, alone in his bed at night, trolling through the dark recesses of the internet in search of good porn because of something Richie had stupidly said while he was horny, and blood rushes to his dick so fast that he gets dizzy with it. 

What kind of porn is Eddie watching? That was the question that had started this whole mess in the first place and Richie needs the answer like he needs to breathe. Does Eddie jerk off while he’s doing it? Does he think about Richie? 

“I just thought,” Eddie continues, ducking his head slightly as if he’s chosen _now_ as the time to get nervous. “That maybe we could try it.” He looks up at Richie from beneath his dark eyelashes and Richie can’t decide whether he’s purposefully trying to be alluring or if that’s just how his stupid face looks: so damn adorable that Richie wants to die. 

“Maybe we could try it?!” Richie repeats, bewildered, sure now that this is all some sort of fever dream. Eddie blinks at him twice, still waiting for an answer, and Richie’s fishes in the back of his mind for any explanation that might make sense. “What, like, for practice?” 

Eddie opens his mouth, closes it again, and then shrugs. “I mean, sure. Whatever.” And how the fuck is he so calm? Richie can feel sweat beading on his forehead and he has the sudden urge to strip out of at least one of the shirts he’s wearing—and not in a sexy way. Curse him and his penchant layers. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?” 

The only person Richie has ever kissed is Eddie’s goddamn neck, but he can’t say that. Not when he’s practically made a career out of lying about all of the experience he doesn’t have. He can’t lie to Eddie, though. Not about this. “No,” he chokes out and Eddie nods like that’s what he’d been expecting in the first place. Richie should be offended, but he’s not. 

“Then kiss _me_.” Like he’s some sort of consolation prize and not the main fucking event. 

“I...what?” 

Eddie shuffles awkwardly on his feet. “Do you not want to? I mean, I could just ask Bill instead. _He_ seems to know what he’s doing.” He’s joking. Richie is like 99% sure he’s joking, but the thought of Eddie kissing Bill ignites a flare of jealousy inside of him so strong that he lunges forward without conscious thought, takes Eddie’s face between his hands, and places a chaste peck on his smiling lips. When he pulls away, eyes wide and hands still hovering in front of him in the shape of Eddie’s head, the other boy laughs. It is a warm, tinkling sound that settles inside of Richie like it belongs there. 

Richie drops his hands, worried that he’s done something wrong. “Sorry,” he starts, “I—” 

But then Eddie takes one deliberate step forward, cups Richie’s face in his hands so that he can pull him back down to eye level, and kisses him like he really means it. 

It’s a slow, lazy, unhurried kiss and Richie can feel it all over his body, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head where Eddie’s fingers are tangled in his wind-swept hair. It’s like there’s a fire inside of him, burning from the inside out, and with every touch of Eddie’s lips, it burns brighter. 

“Is this okay?” Eddie asks, pulling away after a minute. His lips are red and swollen and wet and Richie’s heart trips over itself at the sight. The sun is shining in though Eddie’s bedroom window, illuminating him like an angel, and there’s something so domestic about doing this while the sun is still out. Like it’s something they don’t have to be ashamed of. 

“Yeah,” Richie breathes, tightening his grip on the hem of Eddie’s shirt to keep him from pulling away. “Yeah, it’s okay.” 

Eddie smiles and kisses him again. Only this time, they’re moving. Eddie marches him backwards to the bed and Richie lets his knees buckle once he reaches the mattress so that he can sit down on top of it. With Richie sitting and Eddie standing between his legs, they’re roughly the same height. It gives Eddie more leverage, allows him to move closer, to kiss Richie harder. But they’re still not close enough and Eddie must be able to feel that too because soon, he is climbing into Richie’s lap and settling on top of him like that’s where he’s meant to be. His ass is pressed hard against Richie’s straining cock and every time he moves, grinding his hips down into Richie’s lap, Richie is sure he must be able to feel it—must be able to feel how turned on he is. 

They’re impossibly close like this with Eddie’s legs straddling his and their arms wrapped around each other tight. Eddie kisses him deeper, licks into his mouth, all dirty and wet, but it’s still not enough. Richie has this indescribable need to be consumed by him and he doesn’t know how to make that longing go away. 

Part of the problem, Richie thinks, is that he doesn’t know what exactly he is allowed to do. They hadn’t set any boundaries before diving into the deep end headfirst and he is scared to move too fast. Scared that if he does, it might spook Eddie away. He still hasn’t moved his own hands from the hem of Eddie’s shirt, figuring that the old standby of “keep your hands to yourself” might possibly apply here, but Eddie doesn’t seem to have any qualms with that particular issue because _his_ hands are everywhere: wracking through Richie’s hair, brushing down his face, tracing the contours of his chest. He even takes it upon himself to rid Richie of the plaid overshirt he’d been wearing as a jacket and Richie just lets him do it. 

He’s not sure how long they stay like that until Eddie finally breaks their kiss with a huff of frustration. “Can you just...?” He says without really saying anything at all and then rucks up his own shirt so that Richie’s hands are now touching the bare heat of his skin. Eddie sighs into Richie’s neck at the touch, as if that was exactly what he needed, and Richie is nothing if not a fast learner. When Eddie kisses him again, he kisses back with just as much passion and enthusiasm as before, but this time, he lets himself touch. 

He snakes his hands up the back of Eddie’s shirt, pulling them chest-to-chest so that he can feel Eddie’s heartbeat racing against his, and then he sets to work mapping out the planes of his body, from his shoulders to his belly button. Eddie shivers at every unexpected touch and his eager responsiveness makes Richie brave. He grabs Eddie’s ass through his pants and squeezes. 

Eddie lets out a moan at his touch, breaking their kiss, and then moves his attention from Richie’s lips to his neck where he sets to work giving him what feels sure to be a very impressive hickey. 

“Who taught you how to kiss like this?” Richie gasps, struggling to catch his breath. The thought of anyone else kissing Eddie unsettles something inside of him, but it seems impossible that _this_ is his first kiss. 

Eddie pulls away and sits back on Richie’s hips so that he can look down at him. Then he rolls his eyes, amused. “Who do you think I’ve been kissing, dumbass? I’m always with you.” 

“You’re just...” Richie pauses to take another deep breath as Eddie grinds his hips down against him. “Really good at it.” 

“No, I’m not,” Eddie argues, but he’s blushing. “You just don’t have anything to compare it to.” 

Then he pushes Richie’s shoulders down hard and Richie falls back onto the bed, horizontal. It takes a few seconds for them to resituate, but soon Richie is lying back against Eddie’s neatly stacked pillows and Eddie is on top of him again. Their lips find each other as if magnetized and from this position, it feels more like it had the night Richie jerked Eddie off through his clothes. Only Eddie’s the one in control this time. And Richie likes it. 

Eddie’s rutting against Richie’s thigh, his kisses growing more frantic, and Richie can tell that the boy is hard, even through his jeans. He wonders if he’s supposed to ignore it. He doesn’t want to ignore it. He wants to touch. But instead, he slips his hands down the back of Eddie’s pants and listens as the boy moans. 

“Rich,” he breathes, the name like a prayer on his tongue, and Richie feels his insides melt. 

“Eds.” Eddie groans in frustration at the nickname, but he keeps kissing Richie anyway. In fact, he kisses him harder, as if he thinks that is some sort of punishment. Richie doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s only reinforcing bad behavior. 

Kissing Eddie is heaven, but soon Richie’s boner starts to become a problem. The jeans he’s wearing were too small to start with—he’d grown several sizes in the past year alone and shopping had never been high on his priority list—but now that his dick is hard in his pants, its straining against the zipper in a way that’s become more painful than arousing. Several times, he has to pause Eddie so that he can shift positions underneath him, trying to find one that hurts less. Eventually, Eddie’s had enough. 

“Oh my god,” he huffs in annoyance, sitting down on Richie’s stomach. “Just take them off!” 

Richie freezes with his hips halfway into the air and then drops them down onto the bed again in surprise at having been called out. But it’s certainly an idea. A bad idea, probably, but an idea nevertheless. Still, he had been under the impression that pants were staying on. They aren’t watching porn this time. Orgasms shouldn’t be on the table. This is just kissing. Just practice. 

“Fine,” Eddie says after a long pause, rolling his eyes as if he thinks Richie is being deliberately difficult. “I’ll do it.” Then he scoots back down Richie’s legs until he can reach his belt buckle, which he promptly begins to undo. Richie’s dick, however, doesn’t seem to understand that that’s all that’s happening because it jumps in his pants like an eager puppy and he can feel his face flush with a deep embarrassment. Eddie says nothing, but Richie sees him smirk. 

“Stop,” Richie whines, swatting Eddie away because he fears what might happen if he lets him continue. “I can do it.” 

He’s surprised to find that his hands are shaking, but he does eventually get his pants undone and Eddie is happy to move out of the way just long enough for him to shimmy out of them. Then, Eddie is kissing him again and without his jeans to block the sensations, Richie can feel everything. It’s so overwhelming that he has to break the kiss just to be able to breathe, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind. His lips find the pulse point in Richie’s throat instead and it’s like that point is connected straight to his dick because he’s close to coming in seconds. 

“Fuck, Eddie,” he says, his hips thrusting up of their own accord. He can feel the bulge in Eddie pants pressed against his own and the overwhelming urge to taste it comes over him. It’s something he’s wanted for a while, although he’s never been able to explain where exactly that desire comes from—not even to himself. It’s always just been there, one on a list of many things that he wants to do with Eddie if he ever gets the chance. He wants to kiss him. He wants to fall asleep next to him. And he wants to suck his dick. 

He doesn’t know how to ask for that, though. Practice blow jobs aren’t exactly a thing since girls don’t have dicks. 

Out of nowhere, Richie starts laughing, overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of his thoughts, and Eddie—God bless him—tries to keep kissing his neck anyway until the laughter grows too persistent to ignore. 

“What?” he asks, annoyed, pulling away from Richie’s neck with a loud pop. 

“I want to suck your dick,” Richie shrugs, still laughing. His voice, although laced with humor, is almost apologetic, as if he can barely believe that what he is saying is true. As if he’s still trying to make sense of the words even as he’s saying them. 

Eddie freezes at the pronouncement and Richie expects him to pull away, disgusted—to call the whole thing off—but then he grins. “Yeah, let’s do that.” 

He rolls off of Richie so that his back is now pressed into the mattress and begins shucking his own pants off without further ado. 

“What? Seriously?” Richie asks, all traces of laughter gone. He turns onto his side and stares down at Eddie, who has now completely rid himself of his jeans. He tosses them at Richie’s face and Richie, in turn, throws them to the ground. “You would actually want—?” 

“Richie,” Eddie says, drawing the name out to twice it’s normal length as if he thinks he might be talking to an actual idiot. “You just offered to suck my dick. Would _you_ say no to that?” No, Richie would not say no, but he’s also pretty sure he’s falling a little bit in love, which isn’t very “practice” of him at all. “I mean, you don’t have to,” Eddie amends, probably because Richie’s eyes have grown as large as saucers behind his Coke bottle glasses. He moves his left hand to the front of his briefs to hide a very obvious erection. “But _you_ said—” 

“No, I _want_ to,” Richie assures him. “I just...don’t know how.” 

Eddie smirks. “Well, I think taking off my shorts might be a good place to start.” He moves his hand so that Richie can see all that is on offer and Richie swears his heart stops in his chest because he has never seen anything as goddamn beautiful as Eddie, lying half-naked in front of him. 

Eddie’s still wearing the sweater he’d had on at school—a large peach monstrosity that perfectly matches the flush on his cheeks—but other than that, the only thing that separates him from Richie’s mouth is a small pair of white briefs. Richie starts to reach for them, but then pulls back, feeling certain that he can’t be allowed to. “Are you sure?” he asks. 

Eddie groans. “I swear to God, Richie. If you don’t get your mouth on me in the next ten seconds, I’m actually going to kill you.” 

Richie doesn’t doubt it. Swallowing the last of his nerves dry, he grabs Eddie’s briefs by the waistband and pulls them off, bringing himself face-to-face with another man’s dick for the first time in his life. And boy, is it an experience. Eddie is hard. And although objectively, Richie had known that before, he hadn’t known it like this. Eddie’s cock is flushed pink where it sits erect against his stomach and it’s a good length, too—shorter than Richie’s, but thicker. It’s already dripping with white beads of precome and Richie’s mouth starts to water as he thinks about what’ll it taste like when he licks it off. 

“Whoa,” he praises without really meaning to and Eddie shifts underneath his gaze, uncomfortable with the attention. 

“Are you just going to stare at it or what?” 

“I could,” Richie admits, reaching out to trail a single finger down the shaft. Eddie hisses at the touch, his dick jumping excitedly, and then Richie takes it fully into hand, learning the weight of it. “It’s so...pretty.” He regrets the word as soon as it’s out of his mouth, but it’s too late to take it back now. 

Eddie props himself up on his elbows to glare at Richie. “Did you just call my dick _pretty_?” 

“I did,” Richie admits, grimacing. “But it’s a compliment, I assure you!” 

Eddie doesn’t seem to think so. Predictably, he explodes, seemingly not caring that Richie’s hand is still wrapped around him tight. “Fuck you, asshole! It’s not ‘pretty’. It’s…” He trails off, flapping his hand in the air wildly like he might be able to pull an adjective from nowhere. 

“Ruggedly handsome?” Richie tries. 

“Yes!” Eddie cries, latching onto the word like a life preserver. “It’s the fucking Han Solo of dicks, you dumbass. Your dick _wishes_ it could be this cool.” 

With every curse Eddie throws at him, Richie gets a little bit harder. Apparently, he has a thing for small, angry boys who swear a lot. And apparently he likes it when they call him names. He’s nowhere near as surprised by that revelation as he feels that he should be. All he knows is that listening to Eddie yell obscenities about the roguish charm of his own penis is really doing it for him—so much so that the last of his nerves are soon drowned under a wave of lust so strong that it pulls Richie under and refuses to release him. Without waiting for Eddie to finish his rant, Richie leans down and licks up the length of his dick from root to tip. The taste is bitter, but Richie can’t get enough. 

Eddie’s body convulses violently at the first swipe of Richie’s tongue and he drops back down onto the mattress, finally silenced. “Motherfucker,” he mutters and then grabs a pillow off of the bed next to him to throw over his face, hiding it from view. 

Pleased by Eddie’s reaction, Richie licks him again—and again—until Eddie is finally able to take it without flinching. “Richie,” Eddie moans through the pillow, his voice muffled. Richie looks up, wanting to see his reactions, and sees only that cursed pillow instead. And that just won’t do. He tears the pillow out of Eddie’s hands and throws it to the floor. 

“Hey!” Eddie cries, trying to chase after it, but Richie’s still got a hand wrapped around his dick and that keeps him from going too far. Giving up, he collapses down onto the bed again, this time with his eyes closed tight. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Richie laughs, jerking Eddie off lazily as they talk. “I’m doing some of my best work here and you’re not even looking.” 

“If I look at you, I’m going to come,” Eddie admits easily. Richie almost comes from that alone and no one is even touching _him_. “And we haven’t even gotten to the main event yet, so if you could just speed this along…” 

Richie swallows the last of his fear and takes the tip of Eddie’s dick into his mouth. 

“Fuck,” Eddie hisses, his hips immediately thrusting upwards and choking Richie, who gags at the unexpected intrusion. “Shit. Sorry.” But Richie doesn’t care. Eddie is coming apart beneath him, his whole body trembling because of what Richie is doing and Richie is pretty sure that he’s never been this happy before in his life. 

Trusting that his enthusiasm will make up for his lack of expertise, Richie swallows Eddie down as deep as he will go and listens to the desperate hitch of his breath as he tries to keep himself together under Richie’s tongue. “This isn’t going to last long,” Eddie says, his words tripping over each other in their haste to get out. “Like not long at all. Like I’m about to embarrass myself by how long this doesn’t last and if you make fun of me, I swear to God...” 

Richie takes him deeper and it sounds so wet and so dirty that he can’t help but moan around Eddie cock, which only makes the boy squirm harder. His fingers dig themselves into Richie’s hair and pull, but it’s more comforting than painful and Richie leans into the touch like a cat in search of affection. 

“Richie,” Eddie whines and even though he is the one getting the blow job, Richie is dangerously close to coming. He knows it’s selfish—knows he should be focusing on Eddie—but he has reached the point where if he doesn’t come right now, he thinks he might actually die. He shoves his boxer shorts down with one hand, keeping Eddie’s dick steady with the other, and then he starts stroking himself in time to the rhythm of his lips. 

“Fuck, Richie, I’m going to—” Eddie warns, reaching out to push him away. His eyes are open now, wide and worried, and despite how prepared he’d seemed for this particular inevitability earlier, Richie can tell that the suddenness of his orgasm has taken him by surprise. He barely has time to pull off of Eddie’s dick before the boy is coming, shooting thick ropes of come all over Richie’s face as his own brown eyes roll back in his head in ecstasy. Richie is so shocked that he stops jerking off and instead blinks at Eddie owlishly behind his thick glasses, now covered in a film of tacky come. 

It takes Eddie a second to come back to himself, but once he does, he raises his hands to his mouth in horrified silence. “I am _so_ sorry,” he starts, but almost immediately changes tactics. “What the fuck, you idiot?!” he cries, whacking Richie on the shoulder. “You were supposed to move!” 

Richie is so turned on that he can’t even pretend to be angry. “That was the hottest thing I have ever seen in my life, what the fuck?” he says and Eddie preens. “Shit, I need to—” He starts jerking himself off again, only faster this time, more insistent. 

Eddie, however, seems to have something else in mind. He grabs Richie’s hand, forcing him to stop, and then sits up to whisper in his ear, “What do you need from me, Rich?” The feel of Eddie’s breath against his neck almost finishes him right then and there. 

“I don’t fucking know,” Richie groans, far too gone to even attempt answering a question that deep. “I just need to come. Please.” 

Eddie smirks, pulling Richie down onto the mattress on top of him where they kiss like they might not get another chance. Then he takes Richie’s dick in his hand, guides it to the divot in his hip, and lets Richie rut into the gentle curve of his body like an animal. It’s dirty and delicious and Richie unfortunately has to break their kiss because he’s thrusting too hard to maintain contact, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind the interruption. He kisses Richie’s neck instead. Then his jaw. Then he leans up to whisper, “You said you wanted to come. So come.” 

Richie comes in seconds, painting the already pale skin of Eddie’s stomach white. 

Afterwards, the two boys lay sprawled out next to each other on the bed, sweaty and half-clothed as they struggle to catch their breath. The silence between them grows thick until finally, Eddie speaks. 

“I _do_ have Mario Kart,” he says, tilting his head up to look over at Richie. “If you still wanna play.” 

So they do. They clean themselves up, never once mentioning what had gotten them dirty in the first place, and then play video games for the rest of the night. Mrs. K tries to send Richie home at dinnertime, but it turns out Eddie can be quite charming when he wants to be and he manages to talk her into letting Richie stay under the pretense of studying for a nonexistent History exam. It’s after midnight before they finally crawl into bed and as Richie lays there, trying to trick his body into falling asleep, he begins to worry that he’s found himself at the start of yet another month-long anxiety-fest. Because they _still_ haven’t talked about it and now he is going to have to walk out Eddie’s door in the morning and pretend that he hasn’t been irreversibly changed by what they’ve done. 

What the hell was he practicing for anyway? The only person he wants—the only person Richie has _ever_ wanted—is already lying right next to him with Richie’s come sunk into his skin. This isn’t practice. This is real. Or at least for him it is. And he needs Eddie to know that. 

“Hey, Eddie?” he asks, nervous. Eddie’s curled up on his side with his back to Richie, but Richie can still hear the annoyed huff he lets out at the sound of his name. 

“Go to sleep, Richie,” he groans. “It’s like two in the morning.” And Richie should go to sleep, he really should, but the truth is lodged in his throat and he knows that if he doesn’t cough it up soon, it’ll choke him to death. 

“I don’t think I want this to be practice,” he says, heart thundering in his chest. The second hand on Eddie’s alarm clock ticks thirteen times before the boy finally rolls over and looks up at him, his eyebrows furrowed as if waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, he begins to laugh. 

“Richie Tozier,” he says, burying his face in the front of Richie’s shirt as he works to compose himself. Surprised by the blatant display of affection, Richie grabs the back of Eddie’s neck and holds him there until he finally pulls away, smiling up at him impossibly wide. “What the fuck did you think you were practicing sucking dick for? The Blow Job Olympics?” He laughs at his own joke—a hearty, freeing sound—and even though Richie knows that his cheeks are tomato red, he is laughing too. 

“This wasn’t practice?” he asks, helpless, and Eddie shakes his head. 

“No, you dumbass. I just really wanted to kiss you. _You’re _the one who said it was practice.” 

“Yeah, but I only said that because I didn’t think you wanted it to be real! What the fuck, Eddie!? Why the hell wouldn’t you just tell me that? I’ve been so worried I fucked something up with the...” He trails off, still not quite able to say the word “porn” without dying of embarrassment on the spot. It’s gone unmentioned between them for so long that speaking of it now seems sacrilegious. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, clearly done with Richie’s shit. “Richie, I let you jerk me off. We watched porn together. How the fuck did your tiny brain rationalize that into something platonic?” 

“I just thought you were horny!” Richie cries. “Or very impressionable.” 

“If Bill wanted to watch porn with you, would you do it?” Eddie asks matter-of-factly. “What about Ben?” 

“Ew, no,” Richie cringes. “Why would I—?” Eddie gestures to him grandly as if he’s just won an argument Richie didn’t even realize they were having. “You never said anything!” he continues, feeling the sudden overwhelming need to defend his poor life choices. “That next morning, you were acting totally normal. I figured you just thought it was something boys did sometimes. Like ‘no homo,’ you know?” 

“I’m not _that_ maladjusted, Richie!” 

“You didn’t even have a boner,” Richie argues, thinking back, desperately searching for clues he might have missed. “What teenage boy wakes up without a boner after, well, _that_?!” 

Eddie sighs deeply and a light pink blush rises to his cheeks. “The kind of teenage boy who jerked off in the bathroom before you woke up,” he admits, his voice soft. “For the first time ever, I might add. It was a literal sexual awakening. There were tears.” 

Astounded, Richie reaches out to touch Eddie’s cheeks where those tears might have been and Eddie leans into his touch. “I did too,” he admits. 

Eddie smiles. “I’m in love with your stupid face, you idiot. Why else would I let you get jizz all over me? It was fucking disgusting.” 

“You loved it,” Richie teases, pushing a loose strand of Eddie’s hair out of his eyes. Eddie’s blush darkens. 

“I did.” He pauses and corrects himself. “I do.” 

They stare at each other with matching smiles of disbelief. “What do we do now?” Richie whispers into the darkness, his words a shared secret between them. Eddie cups his face in his hands and kisses him again, long and deep—a kiss full of promise. 

“Well, you know what they say,” Eddie says once they part, his eyes already shining with the ghost of an unshared joke. “Practice makes perfect.” 

Richie groans at the cheesiness of his words and grabs the pillow from underneath his head to smack across Eddie’s face. “I’ll show you practice,” he taunts and then kisses him again, both of them still laughing. They collapse onto the bed in a now-familiar tangle of limbs and kiss for so long that Richie’s lips grow numb. And even when they eventually part, allowing their bodies to settle into sleep, he can still feel that kiss against his lips. 

And it feels infinite. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated ❤️


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